Basking in Flowers at the Albany Tulip Festival

Last weekend, Andy and I went up to Albany for the 66th Annual Tulip Festival in Washington Park. It was such a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

The festival was free and it was gorgeous out, so naturally the park was super crowded, but we managed to finagle our way up close to the flowers to get some good shots.

I had no idea that there were so many different varieties and colors of tulips!

The festival is based on Albany’s rich Dutch heritage, and as such, we spotted some people in costume:

And even a giant clog:

And they may not be as colorful or as beautiful as the tulips, but I liked these little mushrooms nonchalantly growing in between the flower beds. Sometimes it’s nice to get down on the ground and see things from a different point of view.

I hope you all have had a lovely weekend.

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Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden – in all the places.

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun–which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.     –Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden